Artificial intelligence
10 OpenAI engineers
These ten people are current OpenAI engineers, and each holds a Member of Technical Staff role at the company. A reader can learn what engineering work at OpenAI involves from people who have done it.
Professionals to explore
01—10Alisha Lakkad
LinkedInExperience: Member of Technical Staff · OpenAI
Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI since December 2025. Her profile says she previously worked on the Enterprise Engineering team at Statsig building AI evals, as a Software Engineer there in 2025, and on the Financial Data and Experiences team at Microsoft, where she was a Software Engineer from 2021 to 2025.
Alok Priyadarshi
LinkedInExperience: Member of Technical Staff · OpenAI
Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI since November 2025, with the profile headline Software Engineer at OpenAI. At Meta he was a Software Engineer on Meta Robotics Studio (2025) and on Meta Horizon OS Core Services (2024–2025), and he was an Architect at Dexterity, Inc. from 2021 to 2024.
Andrew Glover
LinkedInExperience: Member of Technical Staff · OpenAI
Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI since May 2024. He was CTO at Readyset (2023–2024), and at Netflix he was Director, Productivity Engineering (2020–2023) and Director, Delivery Engineering (2013–2020). He also served as a Board Member of the Continuous Delivery Foundation from 2019 to 2020.
Connie Xu
LinkedInExperience: Member of Technical Staff · OpenAI
Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI since August 2025. Before that she was an Undergraduate Teaching Assistant at Duke University for Design and Analysis of Algorithms (CS 330, 2024–2025) and Computer Architecture (CS 250, 2022–2023), and Women in Technology Co-President at Duke.
Kevin Wang
LinkedInExperience: Member of Technical Staff · OpenAI
Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI since June 2025. At Amazon he was Senior Software Engineer (2022–2025), SDE II (2019–2021 and 2021–2022) and SDE I (2018–2019), and his profile describes eight-plus years building large-scale distributed systems with a focus on reliability and performance.
Nakul Khanna
LinkedInExperience: Member of Technical Staff · OpenAI
Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI since April 2024, based in the London area. He was a Senior Software Engineer at CHARM Therapeutics (2022–2024), Jump Trading (2021–2022) and Bloomberg (2020), and a Software Engineer at Bloomberg from 2016 to 2020.
Nicolas Huang
LinkedInExperience: Member of Technical Staff · OpenAI
Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI since October 2025, a role listed in the Engineering and Technical department. He previously held Software Engineer roles at Meta (2025), Niantic, Inc. (2024), HubSpot (2024) and Paycom (2023), each listed on his profile for a few months at a time.
Rasmus Rygaard
LinkedInExperience: Member of Technical Staff · OpenAI
Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI since August 2023. At Stripe he was Senior Staff Software Engineer (2020–2023), Staff Software Engineer (2018–2020) and Software Engineer (2015–2018), and he was CS106X Head TA at Stanford Computer Science in 2014.
Stefan Zier
LinkedInExperience: Member of Technical Staff · OpenAI
Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI since May 2026. At Lyft he was Staff Software Engineer (2025–2026), Senior Software Engineer (2021–2025) and Software Engineer (2018–2021), and his profile describes him as a staff software engineer building platforms at scale.
Xueqing Li
LinkedInExperience: Member of Technical Staff · OpenAI
Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI since January 2025, after working as a Software Engineer at TikTok from 2023 to 2025. Her profile describes a move from product management into software engineering: she was a Senior Product Manager at MEGVII from 2018 to 2019 and a Software Engineer Intern on Meta's Data Infra team in 2022.
Choose the right perspective
Match the person's background before OpenAI to your question, since someone who came from a large platform company will see the move differently from someone who joined from a startup or straight from university. Check when each person joined, because a recent hire can speak to today's hiring process while a longer-tenured engineer can describe how the work has changed.
Questions to take into the conversation
- 01What does a typical week look like for an engineer at an AI lab compared with your previous company?
- 02What did the interview and hiring process focus on when you joined?
- 03Which skills from your earlier roles turned out to matter most in the new job?
Reaching OpenAI engineers
How can I contact one of these OpenAI engineers?
Pick one of the 10 people on this page and choose "Book a paid call", or describe your project to find others. You offer a fee for a 15-minute call or a written answer, Instant Expert finds the person's work email and sends the invitation, and they decide whether to accept. The list covers 1 company: OpenAI, based on profile data retrieved on October 8, 2026. Being listed here doesn't mean someone has agreed to take calls.
How much does it cost to reach OpenAI engineers?
You choose the offer, starting at $5 per person. It includes Instant Expert's 20% fee, so an offer that pays the person $100 costs you $125. You're charged only when the person books the call or sends the answer.
What if they don't reply?
You pay nothing. Instant Expert sends follow-up reminders, and if the person hasn't booked or answered within 7 days, the request expires and any hold on your card is released. You can invite several of the 10 people on this list at once and cap your total spend, so you pay only for the ones who accept.
Can an AI agent ask one of these OpenAI engineers a question?
Yes. An agent with a USDC wallet on Base can ask one question without an Instant Expert account. It names the person, for example by the LinkedIn URL on this page, and pays per ask over x402 (HTTP 402). The person answers in writing or by voice note, and if nobody answers within 7 days, the payment goes back to the wallet automatically. x402 docs
About this directory
This is a professional research starting point based on business profile data retrieved on . Titles and companies reflect that source snapshot and may describe past or present roles. Check the linked profiles for current details. Inclusion does not imply Instant Expert membership or availability.
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